Putin’s top critic is held on day of protests in Russia
RUSSIAN opposition leader Alexei Navalny was bundled into a police van yesterday moments after he appeared at a protest.
Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic was detained after the authorities said the gathering on Moscow’s main street was illegal.
The crowd was protesting against the presidential election, which Mr Navalny, 41, has been banned from standing in.
The anti-corruption campaigner had only walked a short distance when he was surrounded by police officers, who grabbed him and forced him to the ground.
They then dragged him feetfirst into the van, video footage posted on social media showed.
Earlier, police raided his offices in Moscow, reportedly seizing equipment.
Mr Navalny’s Twitter feed carried a post to his followers saying he had been detained. He was taken to a police precinct in the capital, his website reported.
Mr Navalny has little chance of influencing March’s election result, but his ability to use social media to mobilise crowds of mostly young protesters in major cities has irked the Kremlin.
Police last night released him but said he would have to face court charged with violating laws on holding demonstrations, the maximum penalty for which is 30 days in jail. Mr Navalny emerged as a major threat to the authorities’ tight grip on power on June 12 last year, when thousands of his followers defied police prohibitions to protest in cities across Russia.
The scale of the protests, some of the biggest in six years, took the authorities by surprise.
Yesterday around 1,500 protesters converged at Manezh Square, next to the Kremlin, but were blocked from getting any further by metal barriers and dozens of police in riot gear. Hundreds also protested in St Petersburg, Russia’s second-biggest city, in Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, and other major centres.
By the end of the afternoon, police had detained more than 200 protesters nationwide. Mr Navalny is barred from the presidential election over a criminal conviction for embezzlement that he says is politically motivated.
The European Court of Human Rights later ruled that the conviction was illegal because he was not given a fair hearing.